Tom had been on slow boil, anyway, looking at Kyrie sitting there, as if it were normal to talk like a civilized human being with that ancient horror who had been in her mind, who had manipulated her, who had, in fact, violated her thoughts in a far worse way than a violation of her body would have been. He wanted to do something. Like hurl cooking implements at the dire wolf shifter's head. Or perhaps beat him repeatedly with something solid—like, say, the counter top. Or perhaps simply request that he leave the diner.
He crossed and uncrossed his arms, looking towards him—without appearing to—listening to the things he was saying and studiously ignoring Keith's attempts at making Tom take over the stove so that Keith could beg off.
And then he heard the dire wolf say that Conan—hapless, helpless Conan—was not only, as he'd told Tom, an inadequate bodyguard, sent to protect Tom from the Ancient Ones, but he was, also, somehow, a spy. Or perhaps a listening device. He couldn't stay quiet. He took two steps forward. He put his hand on Kyrie's shoulder, to warn her that he was going to speak, and then he said, "What do you mean he's keeping watch over me? Conan? Yeah, we know Conan is a spy. What of it?"
"Oh, he's more than a spy," Dire said, amused. "He can do things."
Tom frowned. "What can Conan do?"
He saw that Conan, having approached the counter to drop off an order, was standing there, with the order slip in his hand, staring dumbly at Tom and then at the dire wolf, and then back at Tom again.
The dire wolf shifted his attention to Tom and inclined his head slightly, in what might be an attempt at a courteous greeting. Then he looked at Conan and something very much like a contemptuous smile played upon his lips. "Him? I imagine he can't do much. In and of himself. I gather he was recently wounded and those limbs take their sweet time to grow in, when you're that young." His eyes twinkled with malicious amusement. "Who wounded him? You?"
Tom nodded.
"Yes, that would suit the daddy dragon's sense of humor, to send him to guard you, after that. And no, I don't expect he would be any good at it. Certainly no good at all, against someone like me. But unless I'm very wrong, the daddy dragon already has more able forces stationed nearby. He would have sent this creature because he looks helpless and inoffensive, and you, if the thing with the alligator shifter is any indication, have a tendency to take in birds with wounded wings, do you not? So he figured you'd take him in."
"And?" Tom asked, his voice tense as a bowstring, as he shot a look at Conan, who looked ready to drop the order slip on the counter and run screaming into the night. He felt nausea again, the old sense of revulsion at the idea that the Great Sky Dragon knew him; understood him; was playing him.
The dire wolf shrugged and seemed altogether too pleased with what he was about to say. "You see, as you age, you acquire other powers. What a lot of people would call psychic powers, I guess. The ability to enter minds, and to make them think things, or to activate their thoughts . . ."
"Yes, yes, we've gathered that," Kyrie said, mouth suddenly dry.
"I suppose you have," the dire wolf said, and smirked. "But the thing is, you see, that we can also use other, younger shifters, particularly those with whom we have a connection of some sort, as long-distance hearing devices. My guess is that this young one has sworn fealty to the Father of All Dragons, and the Father of All Dragons has, therefore, reached into his mind and made him into his very own listening device. He is listening to us now," the dire wolf bowed courteously in Conan's direction. "I don't know what his game is with you, but I am telling him now that I am staying out of it, and that no harm will come to you through me. None at all. You are his."
Good, the word in the voice Tom had heard before echoed through his head, and suddenly he wondered if that had been what that first touch of the voice, while he was in the shower, had been. An attempt at getting him to admit fealty or subservience to the Great Sky Dragon. Doubtless, that would allow the old dragon to put a spy device directly in Tom's head itself, and not have to bother with Conan. Tom had a strange, sudden feeling that if he had accepted that, Conan wouldn't be alive. He had only crawled back, just in time, to have his boss find himself in need of a pitiful, inoffensive-looking creature. That was the only reason that Conan had been spared.
"Not good," Tom said, making his voice just loud enough to sound forceful, without speaking to the whole diner. "I don't know why the Great Sky Dragon thinks he speaks for me, but he does not. I am not his to either condemn or protect or play games with. You came here to judge me and my friends, and my friends are the only group I owe any loyalty to. If you are going to condemn any of them, Kyrie, Rafiel or Keith, then I demand you condemn me as well," he said. "We are all one. What we did, we did as a group."
He expected . . . oh, he didn't know. Outrage from the Great Sky Dragon. And possibly something more from the dire wolf—rage maybe. Tom could deal with rage right about now, even if he didn't want to have a shifter fight in the diner.
This was not a game. He was not a pawn. And neither was anyone else, here. The sheer denuding of the humanity of everyone, shifter and not, that these old shifters seemed to do, so casually, made Tom want to hit someone. "We are not toys," he said.
There was nothing from the Great Sky Dragon. Not a single word echoed through Tom's mind, and Tom had a moment of strange relief, when he thought he'd set himself free and that the Great Sky Dragon had, somehow, set him adrift. But then the dire wolf threw his head back and laughed so loudly, that a few people turned to look at him.
He brought himself under control with what looked like an effort, reached for a napkin and wiped tears of laughter down his face. "Very funny. Very brave and gallant. No wonder the lady appreciates you, Dragon Boy. You say those things as if you really believed in them. But you know better and I know better. Your elder has claimed you, and in light of your elder's claim, I know you're his, and therefore I am keeping my hands off you. It is not part of my mandate to get people into a war, or to cause trouble for any other ancient shifters. So, I regret to inform you, but you're his, and his you'll remain."
"And what do you intend to do about the rest of us?" Rafiel said. "While there were deaths, as you and the others have felt, they were in self-defense. And as for the young ones who died, it was an accident."
There was a baring of teeth. "I am investigating," he said, slowly. "You know what they say about police work. Most of it is boring and painstakingly slow. I'm going over reports of the case in the local paper. I am looking at the site. I'm making my own determinations." He stood up. From his pocket, he removed the amount of money for the coffee, and carefully laid it on the counter. "I will try to keep shifters from being hurt," he said.
And then he was gone, gliding towards the door, or perhaps teleporting towards it, with a grace so quick and irrevocable that they couldn't have stopped him had they tried.
Tom, on the tip of whose tongue it had been to ask exactly what had happened to the alligator shifter, exactly what this monster might have done to the old friend—the old dependent—that Tom was in the habit of feeding and looking after, was forced to be quiet.
Forced to be quiet, standing there at the counter, looking at his hands slowly clenching into fists. He wanted to scream, or pound the counter. He wanted to shift. And what, with one thing and another, he hadn't taken the time to eat any protein. He hadn't done anything to recover from his last shift. And it didn't seem to matter. He could feel his hands trying to elongate into claws. He could see his fingernails growing.
He stumbled, like one drunk or blind, towards the back door, and outside, stepped into the cold air of the parking lot, suddenly startled that darkness had fallen and that it was snowing again—a steady snowfall, with large flakes. The surprising coldness of the air stopped his fury—or at least acted like a slap in the face, making him take long breaths, and pace a little, stomping his feet, trying to calm down.
He wasn't going to shift. He wasn't going to. As he passed the stove, Keith had called out to him that he needed to go. Tom couldn't leave Keith stuck with this. And while he could, possibly, call Anthony in, if it was snowing again Anthony might be reluctant to come.
He stomped his feet again. There were no windows looking over the parking lot, and the only light came from the two street lamps, which shone, in a spiral of light as though the light were a fracture in the glass of the night, a crack through which something human shone.
There was nothing, Tom thought, blankly. Only the beast and the night. They resent humans for their light, for their bringing light into the night hours. For their science, for their thought. They resent us. I am human. I might be something else as well, but I'm not one of those. I'm not like them. I am not owned. I don't care if I was born of them. I don't care what unnameable offenses they think they suffered at the hands of those they call ephemerals.
He stomped his feet again, and walked out to the parking lot, then back again, the snow falling on his head and, he hoped, cooling it. Shifters are dangerous. Any humans who tried to defend themselves against my kind probably had good reason to. We are dangerous. It's not like we are a harmless and persecuted minority. Oh, there are plenty of those in the world, and the crimes imagined against them are numberless. But no one has to imagine crimes against shifters. No one needs to create grand conspiracy theories to think we control the world or the markets, or even the arts. No. Our crimes are obvious and brutal.
He put his arms around himself, as he realized he was out without a jacket and that the bitter snow-laden wind was cutting through his sweat shirt to freeze the beaded sweat of anger on his body. I have met less than twenty adult shifters in my life and half of those were murderers. I cannot, I will not, believe it is wrong for people like Keith to suspect us of intending ill to the rest of them. Clearly this Dire creature intends plenty of ill to normal humans. Clearly. And the others . . . He shook his head.
"Tom?" Kyrie's voice said, hesitant, from the doorway of the diner. "Tom?"